Chapter 159: Wizard X's Theorem

There’s an old saying that brings some slight warmth to this bleak world.

Even a worm will turn.

There may be no warmer saying than that. It was a compassionate proverb promising that even some piece of human trash filtered out through elementary, middle, and high school, even some damn vermin who’d lived their whole life mired in mud, would still have at least one thing they are good at.

That was true of non-wizard Baek Jemin as well, before magic changed his life.

Even a dumbass high school graduate piece of trash like me had one good habit I could proudly tell other people about. Whenever something went on for too long, I would summarize it, jot it down somewhere, or remember only the key points.

Fortunately, this time I had the notebook Sergeant Lee Jinho had left behind, so I grabbed a pen lying around by the supermarket checkout and wrote things down.

Of course, there are always people who can’t stand seeing someone else show even one admirable quality without needling them. Lee Sejun was a prime example, a nasty specimen made entirely out of jealousy too pathetic to even put into words.

"Doesn’t that just prove you have a bad memory and a short attention span? You’re supposed to hear something once and remember it the first time you hear it. This is why stupid people are hopeless.”

"What the fuck are you trying to nag me for now? Hey. Go annoy Master instead.”

"Manly-Jemin-ssi is no longer my competitor. I’m simply crushing the sprout before it has a chance to grow. Wuss-Jemin-ssi taught me that anything can happen in this world! You can try to look smart all you want, but the fact that you can’t memorize things already gives away the limits of your intelligence. Your vulgar nature isn’t going anywhere either, Jemin-ssi, so if you ever change your mind and decide to compete with me, you should give up now.”

I immediately brushed off Lee Sejun’s pathetic argument.

Keeping notes to look smart? It’s always idiots who make these kinds of assumptions. It’s true that smart people tend to have good memories. But having a good memory alone doesn’t make you smart. That just makes you a parrot without a beak. Sure, parrots are intelligent, but plenty of people would get offended if you said they were smarter than humans.

Even idiots were prone to manipulating and distorting their own memories however they pleased.

If your intelligence is too poor for even basic metacognition and you still refuse to keep records, then you’re a worm that couldn’t even turn properly. Fortunately, I had been born intelligent enough to acknowledge that I was a dumbass.

Feeling superior because I was better than Lee Sejun, and irritated because Lee Sejun had looked down on me, I continued organizing things.

Eventually, the rough outlines of what had happened began to emerge.

But the phenomenon was so bizarre that distinguishing between palace and time had become somewhat difficult, so I decided to temporarily use my own terminology to categorize everything in a way that felt realistic.

I didn’t need some impressive scientific terms. What mattered right now was being intuitive, so I made it very, very easy to understand.

The world I, Baek Jemin, lived in would be Jemin World.

The Republic of Korea in the parallel world that went completely to hell around October 20th, 2038, would be named 5TB Phone World, after the ordinary phone with 5TB of storage I found, which had left the strongest impression on me.

I’d also considered names like Ram Mining World and 128GB RAM World, but they didn’t roll off the tongue well enough, so I brilliantly settled on 5TB Phone World. However, even with such perfect names, I couldn’t avoid complaints.

Hamza frowned at me.

"Jemin-ssi. What’s with Jemin World?”

"Then what do you want to call it?”

"Let’s call it Allah World. You weren't the only person living there, Jemin-ssi.”

That was when everyone who had been holding their tongues suddenly exploded with their own suggestions.

"Islam! What do you mean, Allah's world? It should be Lord World! Jesus World, you know?!”

"Hmm, Hubae-nim, Allah and Jesus both would cause way too many arguments. Everyone gathered here is Korean, so how aboutDangun World, after the ancestors of the Korean people?"

"Jemin-ssi, you should simply leave the naming to me. When we return, it'll be a place that recognizes us as valuable personnel, so I think we should name our world Nadenade World.”

-Tap.

I set the pen down on the notebook and covered my face with my right hand.

Come to think of it, the official term for magic was Localized Intrusive Structural Alteration, abbreviated to LISA. The former was occasionally used in administrative documents or official settings, while the latter was mostly used by American soldiers who had brought the term over from the US. And suddenly, I remembered why the hell they had decided on this ridiculous official name.

I vaguely recall something that might have been said by the late Lieutenant Shin Hangi, or maybe by the colonel at Suwon Station.

'Religious groups kept requesting that instead of the word "magic," we use terminology describing it as a miracle belonging to their respective religion, so for the sake of a neutral and objective expression…’

Right.

Neutrality.

Leaving aside the perfectly intuitive name Jemin World, these damn idiots were wasting time arguing over pointless crap. Annoying as it was, I decided that someone as magnanimous as me should compromise. A Great Archmage’s capacity should be vast enough to embrace everyone.

"We’re calling it Supreme World."

It was Supreme World because it was where the Supreme Archmages lived.

Only then did the Supreme Archmages’ expressions harden as they grudgingly accepted the compromise. Apparently everyone agreed that it was the most neutral and objective term. Hamza alone raised an eyebrow slightly and pressed down on his turban.

"Can’t we just go with Jemin World?”

"No. Now that I think about it, I like Supreme World better.”

"Haah…O Allah..."

According to the way I organized everything, it went like this.

Supreme World, June 11th, 2028.

Brigadier General Thatcher, who had come to lead Reality Survival Command and was awaiting a promotion to major general, focused on the common reports of strange phenomena involving subway stations. With authorization from Marshal McKinsey, future Major General Thatcher requisitioned special personnel and troops from the blockade line to protect them, then planned a reconnaissance operation to inspect the condition of subway stations throughout Gyeonggi Province.

He was going to get promoted anyway, so I might as well call him Major General in my notes.

The force assigned to this first reconnaissance mission consisted of 16 special personnel, 52 soldiers from the blockade line, 18 NCOs, plus the Siblings and Hamza, for a total of 89 people. I didn’t know the military’s organizational structure in much detail, but given the current situation pulling together a force this size seemed pretty significant.

However, before setting out, the Siblings and Hamza met with Shin Nain, who had resolved to destroy the remains of Thousand-Miles Eyes in order to break through to Ears-branch Stage 4, and were able to hear at least a brief explanation of the circumstances. Lee Sejun might normally spend all his time saying and doing all kinds of disgusting shit, but he could pull himself together when things got serious, and he explained it in a way that was very easy to understand.

"As word of what happened in Seongnam has spread, there’s been serious unrest among the blockade line troops as well. Some of the people stationed there have been organizing dissertations and fleeing in the opposite direction, toward Seoul. There are even rumors that people are taking bribes to look the other way whenPMC personnel or outsiders pass through.”

"Are they insane? They’re opening the blockade line?"

"What if the bribes are powerful narcotics, alcohol, counterfeit MPC, or better civilian firearms? What if it’s ammunition, drones, or batteries? On top of that, civilians in the rear are directing their aimless anger at the military after losing their rights. Jemin-ssi…This isn’t going to last for much longer.”

"Fuck. You never told me any of that.”

"The entire Korean-US Combined Command is wary of Ears-branch wizards. Even if they’re allies, if they’re killed after learning classified information and their remains are taken, that information leaks with them, so they’re very thorough about magical safeguards. But Nain-ssi is…currently the most advanced of the Ears-branch wizards. It looks like he’s reached the point where he can break through these safeguards."

The feeling that it was damn bullshit for them to hide something this important coexisted with the rational understanding that of course they hadn’t told us. The military was already an insane organization that had cut off 10 million people to save 40 million, and there was nothing stopping that madness from being turned on us as well.

Even though I knew an individual’s survival and the survival of the Korean people didn’t always align, I had let my guard down without realizing it.

-Haah...

I needed to draw a clear line and decide where I stood.

I could work hard to earn applause from the Korean people, but I couldn’t throw my life away for them like it was nothing. That would be insane. Someone who lives only for sacrifice and devotion may gain honor, but I like power far more than honor.

How the hell had things gotten this bad only half a year after Seoul went to shit?

Enough sighing.

I picked up the pen again and continued writing without hesitation.

The Korean-US Combined Command had hidden even the secrets most dangerous to us. People desperate for hope believed that Gangnam Thousand-Miles Eyes and the 66 Society had failed, but the reality was different. They had expected resolve from the command staff and unity from civilians in the rear, yet had never even tried to understand how the soldiers stationed on the very front lines felt. They had to hold the enemy in place and disappear along with the nukes. The enemy could even dodge artillery fire. The best they could do was spray gas to keep them from advancing. The soldiers’ lives were getting worse by the day. They were supposedly expanding their manpower for shift rotations, but there was no way any soldier would want to return to a trench where they had to face monsters.

Humans always wanted to escape danger, and once they escaped, they tended to fall apart when the time came to go back.

And now, as the troops from the blockade line began to break down, outside forces had begun intervening.

Were the bastards dragging children away that I saw the outsiders the Korean-US Combined Command had been wary of?

What mattered was that, in this situation, Major General Thatcher had ordered a search of the subway system, which was suspected to be the route used by outside personnel. Even with humanity reduced to this state, people were still fighting factional battles among themselves.

Supreme World, June 12th, 2028.

Under Major General Thatcher’s command, the 89-person expedition was deployed to a subway station in Gyeonggi Province that the military had successfully brought under control within the second blockade line. The objective was to explore underground, suppress all unauthorized personnel, seize their supplies, and restore control.

Though they had failed to account for one very, very serious problem.

Expecting them to somehow guess that a subway line that hadn't existed before had suddenly appeared would be like throwing a tantrum demanding they just develop the ability to predict the future somehow.

Not even the legendary AdmiralYi Sun-sin, known to be a Korean military genius, could have predicted that. Subway construction wasn’t something that would just get done in a single month.

The first expedition descended underground and followed the tracks, but the moment they checked the route map, they fell into extreme panic. Some ignored the military chain of command, deserted, and headed back to the surface. The remaining expedition discovered traces of survivors, occupied the subway station for the time being, and held their position while requesting reconnaissance from the three Supreme Archmages.

In other words, everything went wrong the moment they checked the records.

At this point, I could roughly guess what triggered the phenomenon.

"Going underground itself is the trigger. The place didn’t even exist to begin with, so the moment they entered, we have to assume they’d already been transported.”

"Hey, you heretic bastard, then what about checking the records?”

"That was probably the condition for breaking the hypnosis. If they hadn’t checked the records, they would’ve kept holding out thinking they were still in Supreme World until they died.”

Human memory and perception couldn’t be trusted.

That was why contracts were put in writing to begin with and why laws were recorded as well. The fact that checking written records was a way to resist phenomena that manipulated human memory and perception had serious implications. Serious enough that I genuinely considered whether I should tattoo spells onto my skin.

The moment we went underground, we had already crossed into 5TB Phone World without any fog.

Based on that fact, I could infer one more thing.

"It’s like a funnel.”

"Hubae-nim, a funnel?”

"Easy to get into, hard to get out of. It feels like it sucks you in.”

Right when you unknowingly set foot underground, it was already over. You were in 5TB Phone World. It seemed like there was still some way back from basement level 1, close to the surface, but once you reached basement level 2, you were undoubtedly trapped in another world.

What made it especially nasty was that things didn’t look very different. Miss the details, and you could just get trapped in here without realizing that you had to struggle hard to ever get back.

The problem was that even after we made it back aboveground, we were still in 5TB Phone World.

You didn’t need fog to cross between worlds, but you did need it to return to our world, Supreme World. According to Sergeant Lee Jinho’s notes, which suggested someone had been offered as a sacrifice for him to come back, it seemed you absolutely needed the Mist of the Other Shore to return.

The moment I calmly sorted through the parts I had missed amid the extreme confusion and the succession of incredibly weird phenomena, things gradually became clearer.

I could see the rules.

And the moment humans found order and rules, they could calm down.

According to the rules I had organized and the conclusions I had inferred, it went like this.

1. The moment you ever enter an underground space that didn’t exist before, you are already in another world. Checking records can counter cognitive manipulation, but even Supreme World’s records, history, and common knowledge have already been altered to say the underground space existed even when it never actually did. So checking those records on-site is meaningless.

Maliciously, the structure requires you to check records from 5TB Phone World itself to escape the cognitive manipulation. There were people in our world who thought the existence of the subway was strange too, so there must be some sort of exception to it, but it was difficult to figure out right now.

2. Getting into 5TB Phone World is easy, but getting out isn’t. You can still communicate with the surface from basement level 1, but the moment you descend to basement level 2, you enter another world and can’t return without a sacrifice.

I didn’t know whether that sacrifice meant the Mist of the Other Shore, but considering that the phenomenon was created by sacrificing people, I expected there to be a strong connection.

Thinking it through made the truth behind Sergeant Lee Jinho’s insistence that he would rather die than go underground pretty obvious.

That damn Sergeant Lee Jinho, who I’d taken for some gutsy gun wizard, had known what happened if you went down there, kept his damn mouth shut, then handed over his notebook like that somehow cleared his conscience.

Had he managed to hide his intentions from me, an Ears-branch wizard?

No. There was another possibility. A much more likely one. The soldiers I had seen in front of Sergeant Lee Jinho, kicking trash around like a ball, acting like lunatics, were circumstantial evidence. Every one of them had clearly been out of their minds on drugs, and Sergeant Lee Jinho himself had injection marks.

Why had I assumed Sergeant Lee Jinho was sane?

Does speaking properly suddenly mean you aren’t crazy?

"Haah…Fuck.”

3. If that was the case, then it also more or less explained why people were disappearing around subway stations and the concerns of the pastor and Shin Nain, who had been paying attention to those disappearances. There was a high probability that the 66 Society was exploiting this phenomenon.

Naturally, if a sacrifice was required to return from 5TB Phone World to Supreme World…

Then something with little ability to resist, no much strength to fight back, and low caloric requirements would be extremely useful.

If survivors were still here, if they had made contact with the 66 Society, and if they learned there was still a way to escape somewhere safe from this monster situation…

Sometimes I resented the fact that being human trash made it so easy for me to arrive at horrifying conclusions like this.

So that was why they were taking children.

Bringing children to groups of survivors would create very, very high added value.

4. The clue that stood apart from all the others was the President.

It was a clue the owner of the Double-Semicircle Grimoire had mockingly tossed at me at the end like a penny to a beggar, but I’d have to lick even that bone of a clue clean if I wanted to survive. The question lay there.

Why specifically mention the President?

Was it just a coincidence that it reminded me of the President from our world, whom even Gangnam Thousand-Miles Eyes had been unable to find? Or was there something special about the President of 5TB Phone World?

It was far too early to speculate any further on that, so I held myself back.

The owner of the grimoire wasn't a benevolent being. It was probably waiting for me to get carried away, calling it a valuable transaction, throwing myself into it without thinking about the price, and finally crossing the line. Human ruin always begins with a loss of restraint.

I needed to try everything I could myself first and only go back to it if that failed.

When I explained the points I had so thoroughly organized, all the Supreme Archmages gave me strange looks.

"Hmm. You traded with that spawn of Satan to gain intelligence, didn’t you, Baek Jemin?!"

"I liked Hubae-nim better when you couldn’t do anything and just whined and cried…”

"Jemin-ssi. That still doesn’t make you look smart, you know? Hmph."

Only Hamza genuinely teared up and applauded me.

"Jemin-ssi. You’re seriously incredibly reliable right now. Please be like this normally as well!”

“I’m always like this.”

Of everything they said, Hamza’s plea got under my skin the most.

"Thanks to that, I know what we need to do. If any military survivors are still alive, let’s go to them. How many are left?”

Lee Sejun, who always snapped to attention whenever the military came up, answered immediately.

"41. Not counting the people who deserted to search for a way back.”

Some people might be happy to hear a big number.

But the moment I heard it, I couldn’t help frowning.

"That’s too many.”

I wanted to save the non-wizards if I could.

But...

41 people was far too many in this extreme environment.

Perhaps noticing what I was thinking, Lee Sejun added.

"There are quite a few special operators among them. 14.”

"Good. Let’s go.”